What do I need to know before starting with Bitcoin? Because I went to the site and there was scary talk at the sign up and many privacy concern that I can't understand right now because I'm tired. What's the most important info for a noob?

Quote from: garygreen date=1480782226

i also took an online quiz that said i was a giraffe. and i guess you're dumb enough to believe that i must be because the internet said so.

What do I need to know before starting with Bitcoin? Because I went to the site and there was scary talk at the sign up and many privacy concern that I can't understand right now because I'm tired. What's the most important info for a noob?

They don't need to print the money on to notes. Just type the number into a computer. In that sense US dollars are limitless. They can transfer 1000 trillion dollars into the treasury account if they like. But they won't because it would ruin the seriously good racket they have going right now.

...Please take an Economics class. The money supply is carefully regulated, and by fucking definition is limited. If it wasn't limited, it wouldn't be currency. If there exists an organization for the primary purpose of controlling the money supply, it is not unlimited. This isn't complicated.

Thork

They don't need to print the money on to notes. Just type the number into a computer. In that sense US dollars are limitless. They can transfer 1000 trillion dollars into the treasury account if they like. But they won't because it would ruin the seriously good racket they have going right now.

...Please take an Economics class. The money supply is carefully regulated, and by fucking definition is limited. If it wasn't limited, it wouldn't be currency. If there exists an organization for the primary purpose of controlling the money supply, it is not unlimited. This isn't complicated.

They don't need to print the money on to notes. Just type the number into a computer. In that sense US dollars are limitless. They can transfer 1000 trillion dollars into the treasury account if they like. But they won't because it would ruin the seriously good racket they have going right now.

...Please take an Economics class. The money supply is carefully regulated, and by fucking definition is limited. If it wasn't limited, it wouldn't be currency. If there exists an organization for the primary purpose of controlling the money supply, it is not unlimited. This isn't complicated.

Who regulates the Federal Reserve?

...I'd rather not have to teach you all about US political structure, so here's Wikipedia.

Why are we even arguing about this? The value of anything, including currency, is determined by what people will exchange for it. The US dollar only has value for as long as a significant number of people continue to recognise it as valuable. It may only be regulated insofar as people acknowledge the legitimacy of its regulating body.

This is true of all things, but especially fiat currencies, which have no practical value to justify their legal value. Bitcoin is no different from the US dollar in this regard.

They don't need to print the money on to notes. Just type the number into a computer. In that sense US dollars are limitless. They can transfer 1000 trillion dollars into the treasury account if they like. But they won't because it would ruin the seriously good racket they have going right now.

...Please take an Economics class. The money supply is carefully regulated, and by fucking definition is limited. If it wasn't limited, it wouldn't be currency. If there exists an organization for the primary purpose of controlling the money supply, it is not unlimited. This isn't complicated.

Who regulates the Federal Reserve?

...I'd rather not have to teach you all about US political structure, so here's Wikipedia.

So who regulates the FED? The FED does. Being as Ron Paul's Federal Reserve Transparency Act failed, the bank does what the hell it likes. If it wants to make infinite money, no one can stop it. Not even Mr Obummer.

Unless of course you can point me to the bit that shows where money supply is regulated and by whom ...

As I mentioned earlier, printing it to oblivion would render it useless and ruin their economic system. That doesn't meant they can't print as much as they want whenever they want. In reality they print as much as you can stomach.

So who regulates the FED? The FED does. Being as Ron Paul's Federal Reserve Transparency Act failed, the bank does what the hell it likes. If it wants to make infinite money, no one can stop it. Not even Mr Obummer.

Unless of course you can point me to the bit that shows where money supply is regulated and by whom ...

I don't think you understand how American politics work. The FED is not the ultimate source of power and authority.

By everyone else's transactions fees. If everyone happens to be paying $100, you'll have to pay it too. Luckily everyone on the planet are greedy, and normally pay less than a penny.

I can be a bit more specific than that though. Bitcoin has a major disadvantage of only being able to process a maximum a 7 transactions a second (or otherwise notated as a maximum block size of 1MB). Transactions take up space in a block and transaction fees are how transactions "fight" their way into a block. Miners want money, so they pick people with the highest transaction fees. What this means is if too many people are making transactions and you have a very small fee or none at all (yes, you can choose to send bitcoins with a fee of 0) then you might not make it into a block and your transaction floats in purgatory forever (the network later rejects it entirely, you won't lose you money this way).

There is no way around this, unfortunately. It is a issue currently being discussed. Currently the only way to allow more transactions is to increase block size, in which the blockchain will start getting big, as in a few terabytes in less than a year, which is seen as detrimental to Bitcoin's status as "decentralized."

The sort of good news is that Bitcoin hasn't come close to approaching 7 transactions a second. In November 2013 it saw 3 per second.

What do I need to know before starting with Bitcoin? Because I went to the site and there was scary talk at the sign up and many privacy concern that I can't understand right now because I'm tired. What's the most important info for a noob?

That really depends on what you plan on doing with it. First off, there is no official Bitcoin site. Because Bitcoin is an open source, decentralized project, no one can claim rights to it or power over it. That said, you can trust this site, at least for now:

Read the introduction. Watch the video. Do all of it even if you've read this thread because Bitcoin is something you need to truly understand. It has never existed before and it can't be described using any existing technology. If you still have questions after that, let me know.

You've (somewhat) described what it is and how it functions, but in what aspect is it superior to the dollar?

It isn't meant to be a replacement for the dollar (and it quite frankly, isn't going to). It however has a lot of benefits over the dollar. It can't be counterfeited, it has instant transactions that can't be censored, it can be readily traced, and you can be your own bank if you take reasonable steps to secure your funds. With the dollar the only way to secure your funds is to physically have them in your possession in some sort of vault, which is notably more terrible than just about anything else.

That really just depends on what you do with your money. If your total economic interaction involves swiping your credit card at Wal-Mart, then there is zero reason to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin shines if you need something like international transactions or instant transfers. I funded a business in Sweden without having to hassle with my bank and waiting for wire transfers to go through as time was of the essence. To me this is important enough to warrant the use of Bitcoin. Things like remittances would also be very useful if done via Bitcoin since the fees are relatively small. Bitcoin is also very attractive if your country has a dying or no currency at all of its own. No longer do countries have to default to using another country's currency just to maintain their own economy.

It's expensive to transport, secure, and handle. It can be readily counterfeited, despite billions invested in the attempt to stop such things, it cannot be handled by a lone person. I can go on but I could have a very specific discussion about it forever. It really just depends, again, on what you use it for. Bitcoin really wouldn't help the average person, at least I don't see how it would.